PREZ: IT’S WARP SPEED ON VACCINE

Fast-track partnership hoping for end of year

These are the signs of the times.

New Yorkers who flocked to city parks to finally greet the arrival of warm weather on Friday came face to face with the new normal of the coronavirus crisis — officially designated social distancing.

At Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, a cop in an N95 mask stood guard behind a steel barricade with a bright red sign bearing a stark instruction in white letters.

“KEEP THIS FAR APART,” the notice said, over a doubleheaded, 6-foot arrow.

Meanwhile, at Brooklyn’s Domino Park, the message was even harder to ignore. White circles were painted on an artificial-turf field near the southern end of the former sugar factory along the East River.

As temperatures reached the low 80s, every circle was full of sun worshippers soaking in the rays and the waterfront view of the Manhattan skyline.

Some parkgoers had the 6-foot-diameter spaces all to themselves, while others were crammed full with as many as four people each.

Benches nearby held people eagerly waiting for a spot to open up. A group of girls swooped in when they saw a couple getting ready to leave.

Video of the scene was posted on Twitter by journalist-turned-digital publisher Jennifer 8. Lee, who dubbed the arrangement “human parking spots.”

Lee said the ease with which everyone adapted was astounding.

“If you were to take video footage from the world today and show it to someone from 2019, they would think it was from some near-future Hollywood dystopian television show instead of real life,” she noted.

President Trump on Friday unveiled the full details of his “Operation Warp Speed” effort to develop and distribute a coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible — with hope growing that one may be ready by the end of the year.

In a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden (above), Trump announced the large public-private partnership that will be led by former pharmaceutical executive Moncef Slaoui and Gen. Gustave Perna, commander of the US Army Materiel Command.

The operation would not only include an around-theclock effort to identify a viable vaccine but will see a huge manufacturing effort to deploy it as soon as it is ready, Trump said.

“We’re getting ready so that when we get the good word that we have the vaccine, we have the formula, we have what we need, we’re ready to go, as opposed to taking years to gear up,” he said.

“We’re gearing up. It’s risky. It’s expensive, but we’ll be saving massive amounts of time, we’ll be saving years if we do this properly,” the president added.

Experts including White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony

Fauci, who attended the briefing, had previously estimated a viable treatment could take up to 18 months to develop, but hopes are growing that a COVID-19 vaccine could be identified by late fall.

Making his White House debut on Friday, the new vaccine czar, Slaoui, a former chairman of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, said he believed millions of treatments could be available in the next six months.

“I have recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine, and these data make me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020,” Slaoui said.

Speakers at the Rose Garden ceremony were at times barely audible as truck drivers who have been protesting in Washington, DC, for fair pay for nearly two weeks blared their horns for the duration of the event.

Despite his all-out push for a vaccine, the president also speculated that the economy could return without one.

“Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back,” he said, suggesting that the country would “fight through it” and that the disease could go away on its own.

“I’ve lost friends. Many of us have lost friends. We read about that and we see that, but it’s a very small percentage, it’s a very, very small percentage. I say it all the time, it’s a tiny percentage,” Trump said later when asked to clarify his remarks.

Later Friday, Fox News reported that Trump has drafted a letter to the World Health Organization promising to restore some US funding — but only as much as China pays. That amount, about $40 million, is one-tenth of the US obligation to WHO.